Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music
by
Greg Milner (Goodreads Author)
In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro T...more
Hardcover, 432 pages
Published
June 9th 2009
by Faber & Faber
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
660)
Fascinating, surprisingly comprehensive, and yet at the same time rich with anecdotes and digressions, this is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history of popular music.
Approaching the subject from the technological viewpoint, Milner's book explores the history of recording methods and techniques, and the oddly repetitive discourse surrounding recorded sound. Knowing a little about this subject myself, there was no point at which I felt this was off target, and the discussion is n...more
Approaching the subject from the technological viewpoint, Milner's book explores the history of recording methods and techniques, and the oddly repetitive discourse surrounding recorded sound. Knowing a little about this subject myself, there was no point at which I felt this was off target, and the discussion is n...more
Usually with 400 page facty books you enjoy them but are happy to have got through to the end. With this, I was disappointed when I got to the last few pages. So much fascinating detail, so many fascinating stories, and hundreds of answers about the recording of sound, none of which Milner is arrogant or foolish enough to call definitive.
This starts off with the Big Bang, obviously, and how the universe spread out in waves of sound and light. Then we get a little more specific, with technical bu...more
This starts off with the Big Bang, obviously, and how the universe spread out in waves of sound and light. Then we get a little more specific, with technical bu...more
1 like · like · see review
view all 6 comments
This book is outstanding. The cover (and title to a lesser degree) might lead one to believe that it is a dry academic work but that couldn't be further from the truth. The mechanical and cultural impact of recorded music read like well-paced fiction.
Milner writes about the whole history of recorded sound with humor and insight. His retellings of Edison's efforts and the field recordings that john and Alan Lomax did in the 1930's illustrate the conflicts between fidelity and reality that have sh...more
Milner writes about the whole history of recorded sound with humor and insight. His retellings of Edison's efforts and the field recordings that john and Alan Lomax did in the 1930's illustrate the conflicts between fidelity and reality that have sh...more
Starting with Thomas Edison's invention of the Gramophone, it traces key developments in the world of music, including the development of analogue tape, the high fidelity years, multitracking, digital, the Loudness Wars and finally the emergence of Digital Audio Workstations such as Pro Tools which instigated the widespread closure of the legedary recording studios of the world, such as the Power Station in NYC.
If you're a music fan of any kind, this book is simply a must-read: one of those work...more
If you're a music fan of any kind, this book is simply a must-read: one of those work...more
Review at Konichiwa Witches, on the "Bell" pages....
http://home.earthlink.net/~cumulo-nim...
http://home.earthlink.net/~cumulo-nim...
This book is highly informative, opinionated, and as objective as a discussion of human perceptions can really be. I'd say the subject of this book is: how do we listen? how do we think we listen? are those as closely related as we think?
Spoiler: No.
I'm a pretty big audio geek, so any book that can spill info I never knew about both the history of the development of audio tape recording and the record "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown" is of enormous value to me.
Highly recommended to a narrow aud...more
Spoiler: No.
I'm a pretty big audio geek, so any book that can spill info I never knew about both the history of the development of audio tape recording and the record "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown" is of enormous value to me.
Highly recommended to a narrow aud...more
Probably the first accessible "general audience" book about the history of recording music, it perfectly balances the sociocultural context behind the history of different recording practices and technological advances without skimping on either front or capitulating to an elusive mainstream audience. As a recording engineer, I was surprised that even I learned new things and yet I'd still feel comfortable recommending the book to my Mom or anyone looking for a general pop-nonfiction read.
1 like · like · see review
Surprisingly thorough and readable history of recorded sound, with great technical explanations and dramatic stories - my favorite being the saga of the Lomaxes, that father/son field recording duo who discovered and exploited Leadbelly. Somebody should make a movie out of that. Also cool bits on Edison and how excessive mastering supposedly ruined RHCP's Californication and Metallica's Death Magnetic (yeah like I'm really gonna believe those albums were any good to begin with).
This is a well-researched and intermittently fascinating look at the history of recording technology. Music geeks will like it because they get to learn a lot of semi-technical stuff about compression and waveforms and the like. Milner is not a natural storyteller and occasionally gets himself crossed up; the book could have been substantially shorter. Audiophiles and vinyl snobs will find ammunition for defending their Luddite ways.
1 like · like · see review
Fascinating history of recorded sound, with a very interesting emphasis on the development of recording formats in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It's interesting, also, that certain themes in recording history repeat themselves regularly, notably the repeated commercial success of less sophisticated and lower quality formats over more technologically advanced and higher quality ones.
This book was a fun, and at times, a hard read. It is chalked full of interesting tid bits about the way we hear and record sound. It also explains the age old debate of analog vs. digital. I pretty much only buy vinyl now because of this book. In some places, the book can get pretty technically challenging and, well... boring, but i found it rewarding and informing. Pick it up.
This book is a must-read for 'audiophiles', but is also intensely interesting for anyone who enjoys and listens closely to music. Starting with Thomas Edison and the first recorded sounds, this book is not only an informal 'history' of recorded music, but it also poses some very interesting philosophical issues on what should constitute realistic lifelike music playback. What this means in terms of sound mixing, mastering, and producing is covered in great depth.
This book will be an absolute rev...more
This book will be an absolute rev...more
Exhaustively researched only begins to describe it. Really really cool, and has some really illuminating things to say about analog vs. digital and audio compression, showing just how wide the gulf between what we think we know and what we actually do is. Extremely refreshing to read audio-nerd stuff that DOESN'T melt into a pile of hand-wringing over 'the digital age'.
If you are fascinated with the history of sound recording, the act of sound recording, the art of sound recording...as I apparently am...this well-written and comprehensive book will not disappoint. Not a dry, academic chronicle...rather an enjoyable walk across more than a century of technological developments, peppered with anecdotes, fortified with explanations. Does music today really sound "better"?
good book but gets very very techy at the end but certainly changes the way you think about all recorded sound. he lays his cards on the table where he stands on the whole issue but its very enjoyable, howver for me the first half of the book was better.
An illuminating history of recorded music and the developments and conflicts of its past. It brought home the artificiality and contingency of something we take as natural, and the processes by which the status quo formed.
I thought this book was very interesting and I learned a lot from it. However, it is not for everyone. At times I found it to be quite dense and detailed. I also had minor criticisms about some of the writing (abrupt topic changes and typos were some of the bigger ones). That being said I still really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others with an interest in the topic
A remarkable history, analysis and amble through the technology and moreover the cultural impact of recorded sound. If you want to know why Def Leppard's Hysteria is the perfected apotheosis of the acoustic recording era, read this. If you want a cracking overview of the "Loudness Wars", it's here. If you want to discover why CD isn't quite (and wasn't intended to be) "perfect sound forever", how the Emulator and Synclavier changed music, and how Pro Tools has completely changed the time and pla...more
If you have even a cursory interest in the history of recording music I highly recommend it. It satisfied the engineer in me and presented some interesting philosophical points.
A classic. Absolutely fundamental for anyone who's interested in music's phenomena in the 20th century. An endless source of pleasure, information and fact checking. Just great.
Just a tad too technical for me but not overly so. I enjoyed the book but thought either it needed a little editing or I need to be a little smarter on the technical details.
This book is for anyone who hears the mix in recorded music. It is the history of the inventors and engineers of recording technology, from Edison to today's popular music.
If you're interested in the history of recording technology, this is a great book to pick up. It's dry at times, but fulllll of stuff I didn't know. Very readable.
Absolutely one of the best things I've ever read about recorded audio. The chapter on Leadbelly's discovery/exploitation/celebration/creation is splendid, and the rest of the book is pretty well done too.
Occasionally this lurches a little, from almost-stale college-research-paper historical bits into magaziney "then I went to his house to hear his $5,000,000 speakers for myself" bits. But all in all it sustains a high level of intelligence and ease, and occasionally rises to truly high levels of...more
Occasionally this lurches a little, from almost-stale college-research-paper historical bits into magaziney "then I went to his house to hear his $5,000,000 speakers for myself" bits. But all in all it sustains a high level of intelligence and ease, and occasionally rises to truly high levels of...more
Now I know why I like listening to some albums more than others on my new stereo, and why vinyl lovers are both right and wrong.
So far I am enjoying it. The phonograph is my favorite invention; it's more important than the airplane.
Fascinating. A must for any music fan. Wonderfully revealing, insightful and entertaining.
Brilliant book packed with info, really enjoyed it.
A very good read that traces the technological development of sound recording through a discussion of the aesthetic choices it presented to musicians and to the recording industry and mixes this perspective against the practical and economic restraints that blurred the intended effects of those choices. Greg Milner demonstrates how time and again "perfect" sound has proven to be a cultural abstraction and a commercial chimera. Get this book and read it - even if it may make you unhappy with larg...more
Idea for next Ken Burns doc: The Loudness Wars.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“This is... an attempt to find some of the important fault lines in the narrative of "recorded history"--the points where people with access to the technology decided that *this* was how recordings should sound, and *this* is what it means to make a record. Ultimately, this is the story of what it means to make a recording of music--a *representation* of music--and declare it to be music itself.”
—
1 person liked it
“When you have two notes from two different performances Auto-Tuned, it sounds like a car horn. And then you add harmonies, and it starts to sound like baby seals honking." - Tom Lord-Alge on Auto-Tune”
—
1 person liked it
More quotes…
